Certain wireless communication systems such as time divisional multiple access (TDMA) and global system from mobiles (GSM) systems require base stations to transmit control channels at a constant and high power level so that these control channels are received by mobile stations even at the edge of a geographic area, referred to as a cell, served by the base station. When base stations are transmitting control channels at the same power as described above, the downlink carrier-to-interference ratio C/I of the control channels is determined by the reuse factor K. The reuse factor K determines the distance between two cells using the same frequency for transmission. As will be appreciated, downlink channel quality is better (e.g., C/I is higher) when the reuse factor K is larger. However, the utilization of available spectrum will be reduced with a larger reuse factor K. Stated another way, a smaller reuse factor K provides for a greater call handling capacity by making a greater number of frequencies available for use.
While a number of schemes have been proposed to improve the spectrum utilization for traffic channels, these schemes are not applicable for channels transmitted at constant power such as the above-mentioned control channels. Accordingly, the bottleneck for overall spectrum utilization becomes the reuse factor K for the control channels. This is especially true for GSM systems, where the percentage of spectrum used for control channels is quite high.